Film reviews: Godzilla roars, Rocky rises in cinema's best week of 2026

GODZILLA MINUS ZERO (15, 135 mins) ★★★★★

Wow! There’s a brilliant week in store at cinemas, thanks not least to the first Japanese film shot in IMAX format.

To suggest that it feels as if it has been directed by both Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer) and James Cameron (Avatar) is both a compliment and a huge disservice, given that Takashi Yamazaki is also the writer and Oscar-winning visual effects maestro behind this magnificent sequel to his previous film, Godzilla Minus One (2023).

That this is also the 39th Godzilla film tells you all you need to know about the enduring strength of the franchise, first launched more than 70 years ago in 1954.

But even if you’ve never seen one before, Godzilla Minus Zero will blow your socks off if seen on an IMAX screen or in a premier alternative such as Odeon Broadway Plaza’s Dolby theatre.

Clearly learning from Nolan, the frequently intensifying score behind Yamazaki’s extraordinary action vision will squeeze the breath out of your lungs and pop your eyeballs, too.

The acting can be overwrought, Japanese-style, and some effects are a touch cheesy in honour of the franchise’s origins. But, like the strings in Thunderbirds, such ‘rough edges’ somehow only serve to humanise the story.

Here, Japan is still suffering from the devastation of the nuclear bombs at the end of the Second World War, as well as the destructive Godzilla era, seemingly over.

An orphanage is at the human heart of the story, with Godzilla survivor Noriko and former kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima having adopted young Akiko.

Safeguarding everyone is Large-Scale Disaster Response Bureau chief Kenji Noda.

When Matsumoto City is then attacked by a new creature, it is named Ghidorah as a combination of chimera and hydra.

Will a new fuel-air bomb help to kill it? Will the United States contribute? Is Godzilla really dead? And, as with Brendan Murphy’s recent Second World War film Pressure, can a knowledge of weather systems help in battle?

Despite the wars in Ukraine and Iran clearly violating the post-war ‘peace dividend’, Godzilla Minus Zero’s pre-AI spirit of invention suggests that all hope for humanity should not yet be lost. In Godz we trust!

I PLAY ROCKY (12A, 128 mins) ★★★★★

Conceived on the back of a Muhammad Ali fight against a gallant rank outsider, Rocky was a pitch that became a best picture Oscar-winner, one that has lost none of its underdog power half a century later.

The original 1976 movie made an unknown but determined chancer called Sylvester Stallone only the third person to be Oscar-nominated for best writer and best actor in a film, after the legendary Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles.

Likewise, I Play Rocky now punches far, far above its weight.

The remarkable Anthony Ippolito isn’t doing an impersonation of (the now 80-year-old) Stallone; it’s simply as if he really is him. And that this is a contemporaneous ‘DVD extra’ shot at the time with the real Sly.

I Play Rocky director Peter Farrelly won best picture and original screenplay Oscars for Green Book (2019), but is best known for his first three movies – Dumb & Dumber (1994), Kingpin (1996) and There’s Something About Mary (1998).

As with Stuck on You (2003), his cruelly overlooked conjoined twins drama starring Matt Damon, Farrelly still knows when to throw an uppercut and when to love you tender.

Boxing fan or not, I Play Rocky will tick every box you want it to, including watching the remarkable birth of the Steadicam revolution.

Above all, its inspirational authenticity guarantees you will leave the cinema punching the very air you are walking on, just like it’s 1976.

ONWARDS AND SIDEWAYS (15, 115 mins) ★★★★★

Battling Parkinson’s disease doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs – but this is the funniest film of the year, as well as a tender, romantic drama of the highest order.

Far removed from your typical ‘disease of the month’ movie, the beautifully written script is by Paul Mayhew-Archer (The Vicar of Dibley), whose first-hand experience of the condition informs every scene and challenge across five years.

Directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), Onwards and Sideways is a supremely poignant reminder to try to live life to the full. Notting Hill star Rhys Ifans gives the performance of his career as Tony, a deputy head who is newly diagnosed with the disease.

He then meets an American composer who calls herself ‘Emma the Tremor’ (Laura Linney).

What results is the most enjoyable later-life drama since future Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker was caring for screen legend Peter O’Toole in Venus (2006). It’s no coincidence that its late director Roger Michell was a contemporary friend of Madden.

Having seen his Shakespeare in Love film beat Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan to the 1999 best picture Oscar, the now 77-year-old Madden is today clearly carrying his own life-affirming torch.

Onwards and Sideways is a spellbinding return to form. Your soul will love you back if you bathe in Madden’s light shining through the dark.

WILD HORSE NINE (15, 117 mins) ★★★★

Director Martin McDonagh is the undisputed king of dark comedies, thanks to In Bruges (2008), Three Billboards (2017) and The Banshees of Inisherin (2022).

And here’s another eagerly anticipated one, starring Steve Buscemi, John Malkovich and regular collaborator Sam Rockwell.

McDonagh’s own script is set just prior to the 1973 Chilean coup d’état and rattles around with dark pasts, conspiracy theories and possible American interference – for better or worse, as per usual when it comes to its foreign affairs.

Buscemi is a Chile-based CIA bureau chief who sends CIA officer Lee Chesterfield (Rockwell) and his mentor Chris Carlisle (Malkovich), who is suffering from terminal cancer, to Easter Island.

The faded interiors and period cars are characters in their own right, while the pre-internet political commentary feels as remote as the setting, where friendships – including Chris’s dealings with a pair of spiky female students – ought to count for everything.

The best actor winner at the Venice Film Festival, Malkovich remains a dry, acquired taste but delivers many of his lines with uproarious malice to keep long-time career admirer Rockwell on his toes.

Another bonus is that the audacious McDonagh chose to shoot the film with his Three Billboards cinematographer Ben Davis across the Pacific Ocean on Easter Island (population akin to Studley near Redditch).

The remote, distinctive landscapes and monolithic moai statues provide memorable backdrops as the film literally heads towards a Tarantino-style implosion in slow motion.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AUBREY FLINT (PG, 98 mins) ★★★

Birmingham’s German Market might have opened on Bonfire Night to the tune of Paul McCartney’s most irritating song, but silver-screen festivities should never begin this early.

John Bradley plays the titular character, a Christmas-hater sentenced to community service in a retirement home, where he’ll find chain-smoking Gloria Lynn (Celia Imrie) among the other residents.

With a cast including a scarcely recognisable Richard E Grant as Mr Hopkins and Nigel Planer as Ned, there’s no shortage of talent around Flint as he tries to direct an amateur production.

Young director Jack Spring has previous form with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, so he clearly loves the material. This harmless variation has enough fun moments to delight amateur thespians everywhere.

But the initial weak premise makes the film feel as if it’s always trying too hard – unlike the gorgeous, swan-like efficiency of everything else this week.

Reviewing films in Birmingham since 1989, Graham Young is a former UK Regional Film Journalist of the Year and three-time runner-up.